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Conflicting Public Service Obligations

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

Robert Wechsler

My blog entries must often seem like attacks on business interests. One reason is that conflicts are usually about personal financial interests conflicting with a government official's obligations to the public, and our democratic values require that the official's fiduciary obligations take precedence. And where there are financial interests, there are usually businesses.

But that is not always the case. Obligations themselves can conflict, without any direct financial interest. The most common instance occurs when the conflict is not with one's own interests, but with one's employer's interests. Even though the official may not make a penny out of a transaction, the fact that her employer will, and that the individual has an obligation to the employer, is enough to create a conflict of interest. Even here, however, a business is involved.

But the employer does not have to be a business. It could be a governmental entity or a not-for-profit entity. According to a recent letter to the editor, the latter is the situation in Prince William County, Virginia. A planning commissioner there apparently is also the paid executive director of a local conservation organization that tries to influence the planning commission. This individual has sometimes conflicting obligations to two different groups of individuals. According to the letter, the chairman of the Board of County Supervisors considers this not a conflict, but good public service. But a conflict between public service obligations is more serious in some ways than a simple financial conflict. You can sell a property, recuse yourself from a particular transaction, cancel a contract, but ongoing and conflicting fiduciary obligations are much more difficult to deal with. There is usually no resolution but resigning from one of the two positions.